Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Revisiting the Denham Tracts

Aeons & Augauries has a post talking about different types of humanoids that reminded me of the Denham Tracts list of spirits and fairies (including the notable pre-Tolkien inclusion of Hobbits). There's also an article in Dragon Magazine #158 that gives a lot of alternate names, though I'm a bit more wary of how the author defined some of the alternate terms.

The wiki article has a lot of links, showing us that many of the listed names are just variants of the same thing, and there are a couple of repeated entries, so I went in to take a look and came up with the following list:
UPDATE: After going to the original Denham Tracts, I found several annotations to include on the list.

Notes:
*possibly made up
**follet may be a type of french hobgoblin, the lutin or nain rouge
**korred may be a variant of korrigan
***predates Tolkien's usage

Annotations from the Denham Tract:
1. Boggle-house, parish of Sedefield. Bellinham Boggle-Hole, Northd. [Bogle houses in Lowick Forest, Northumberland.]
2. There is also a river of this name in the Bishopric of Durham. Also at York is Browney Dike, a portion of the Foss.
3. The York Barguest. See Memoirs of R. Surtes. Esa.: new ed., p. 80, 1852.
4. This merry fay acted the part of fool or jester, at the court of Oberon, the fairy monarch.
5. Hag-House. A farmstead near Braneepeth.
6. The Mortham Dobby. A Teesdale goblin.
5. Hob-o-t'-Hursts, i.e. spirit of the woods. Hobthrush Rook, Farndale, Yorkshire.
8. The spirit or double of a dying person.
9. Mock-beggar Hall. Of houses, rocks, etc., bearing this name we meet with many instances.
10. Elf-Hills, a parish of Hutton-in-the-Forest, Cumberland. Elf-How, a parish of Kendal. Elf-Hills, near Cambo.
11. There is a village of this name near Chester-le-Street; and singular enough a ghost story, called the "Picktree Bragg," is attached to it. See Keightley's Fairy Mythology, Bohn's ed. p. 310.
12, 13, 14, 21, 23, 27. The same as note 8.
15. This oulde ladye is the evil goddess of the Tees. I also meet with a Nanny Powler, at Darlington, who from the identity of their sirnames, is, I judge, a sister, or it may be a daughter of Peg's. Nanny Powler, aforesaid, haunts the Skerne, a tributary of the Tees.
16. The Heddon Silky, and Silky's Brig, near Heddon. See Richardson's Table Book, Leg. Div., vol. ii., p. 181.
17. Occasionally, we may hear Cowed, or rather Cowd Lad. The meaning, however, is the same; Cowd being a variation of the more refined world, cold.
18. Goblin Field, near Mold, Flintshire.
19. Hob-Cross-Hill. A place near Doncaster.
20. "The Hedly Kow," a Northumberland ghost story.
22. "Know you the nixies, gay and fair?
Their eyes are black, and green their hair,
They lurk in sedgy waters."Keightley.
24. See ghost story of the "Brown Man of the Moor." Richardson's Table Book.
25. The Hazelrigg Dunny. An excellent Northumberland ghost story.
26. "Frae gudame's mouth auld warld tale they hear,
O' warlocks louping round the wirriknow."
The works of Robt. Fergusson, ed. by A.B. Grossart, Edin., 1851, p. 61.
Mr. Maxwell uses worrikow as the name of a ghost in his Border Sketches. From the honour paid to him, according to the above couplet, he appears to have been a sort of master hobgoblin.
28. Mother witches.
29. Fairy Dean, two miles above Melrose. Fairy Stone, near Fourstones, in the parish of Warden, Northumberland. This stone, in which a secret cavity, has attained a celebrity in history owing to the letters being placed therein, to and from the unfortunate Earl of Derwentwater, during the '15.
30. Thrummy Hills, near Catterick. The name of this sprite is met with in the Fairy tales of Northumblerand.
31. These are a certain class of female Boggles, not altogether peculiar to Scotland, who wore the lower robes, at least, a-la-bloomer. The are named by Burns, in his inimitable poem Tam-o'-Shanter. Mr. Halliwell gives the word as localized in Somersetshire.

Wikipedia notes that parts of the list may derive from Discoverie of Witchcraft, dated 1584, so here is that list for comparison:
"...and they have so fraied us with bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, sylens, kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changelings, Incubus, Robin good-fellowe, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell waine, the fierdrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob gobblin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs,..."

Obviously, not all of the entries are humanoids, Will-o'wisps, Barguests*, Black Dogs, Hell Hounds, Wirry-Cows, various types of ghosts & spirits, and some other undead are included. Some of the possibly made up names are also interesting, because they're more likely alternate or regional spellings of the other included creatures. Tracing the variant names through Wikipedia gives us some interesting notes, but mostly shows that the term 'hobgoblin' covers the majority of the mischievous humanoids, covering brownies, bogles, bogies, bogeymen, pucks, buccas, pookas, etc. which in turn links to ettins (giants), barguests (which leads to black dogs), headless humanoids, Brags (which leads to kelpies and other water horse/necks which leads to nixies), and changeling/shapeshifter creatures (which is no doubt why so many of these creatures bleed over into other, non-humanoid types...they have a preferred shapeshifted form in order to play pranks on the people they encounter.

Given this list, even with a few duplicate entries, I'm kind of surprised and disappointed that some other names didn't show up. Dullahans have become more popular lately as one of the many headless horseman (or coachman for the "death-hearses" entry) variants. Black Dog (and other hell hound/ghost dog variants) didn't appear as much as I would have thought; Black Shuck, Black Hounds, Wishthounds, Padfoots, the Grim, Shags, Shugs or Black Shugs, Trashes, Strikers, Skrikers, Lean Dogs, Gurt Dogs ("Great Dogs"), Hairy Jacks, Yell-Hounds, Cù Sìth (though more widely recognized as an "elf hound"), Black Dogs of Death (Tchico), and Tchian d'Bouôlé (Black Dog of Bouley Bay), Oude Rode Ogen ("Old Red Eyes") aka "Beast of Flanders", Tchén al tchinne ("Chained Hound"), etc. Banshees also seemed under-represented. I'm somewhat surprised that undines/ondines and salamanders didn't make this list either, given that sylphs and gnomes did. Some other common types that also seem to have been missed: Bean nighe, Billy Blind, Bluecap, Bodach, Caoineag, Cat Sìth, Coblynau, Drow (related more to trow than the commonly depicted modern 'dark elf'), Each uisge, Fear darrig, Fuath, Ghillie Dhu, Glaistig, Grindylow, Hedley Kow, Huldra, Jack-o'-lantern (a surprising lack of this variant), Jenny Greenteeth, Kabouter, Killmoulis, Klabautermann, Knucker, Leanan sídhe, Merrow, Nain Rouge, Sluagh, and Tomte.